Facebook Collaborates with Datalogix to Increase Sales

Tracking Consumers That Purchase Online

Facebook has collaborated with Datalogix, a data collection firm that collects consumer information from more than 1,000 retailers.  By matching the emails and information from these consumer data to the Facebook account profiles, Facebook is able to prove that people actually purchase the products that are being advertised on Facebook.

According to The Financial Times, Facebook has bought loyalty cards and program data on 70 million American households from Datalogix in an attempt to increase sales for their marketers.  The collected data are rendered anonymous and separated into two groups, one who have seen the ad and one who has not.  Then Datalogix assembles a report that indicates which marketing and demographic marketing approaches work best for consumers to purchase products offline. 

In terms of effectiveness, they have evaluated 45 campaigns and found out that out of 70% of these campaigns, they make $3 in sales for every dollar they spend for advertising. Marketers find the information to be useful but some are still trying to decipher and make use of the data. 

On the other hand, a number of privacy advocates suspect that this is an infringement of the $9.5 million settlement that Facebook has with the US Federal Trade Commission over privacy charges.  Facebook users must go to the Datalogix website to choose not to participate or else they are automatically integrated into this study.  However, Facebook said that individual user data is not shared with Facebook and the marketers.

Source: The Financial Times

By Luyao Li

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